As it is known in the art, effective traffic planning for a geographic area requires an understanding of actual traffic conditions in the area. Information about traffic patterns and volumes, including types of traffic, speed, purpose of the trip, duration of the trip, trip frequency, etc. are used by traffic planners to design traffic systems. Such information is useful for municipalities engaged in town and city planning; traffic engineers designing roadways, subways, or other traffic systems; law enforcement agencies that wish to create targeted traffic enforcement policies; and many others.
Traffic survey data is typically collected via devices placed on or near a roadway. Such devices include but are not limited to weight activated bending plates embedded in the road, pneumatic road tubes, piezo-electric sensors, and the like. Traffic data is also collected by travelers filling out surveys about their travel and by human observation. The data from these various sources, when viewed together, can provide a picture of traffic patterns for a particular area. However, these methods of gathering traffic data are expensive to perform. Also, such methods provide a limited view of the traffic that can quickly become out of date because the methods provide only a snapshot in time of the traffic patterns and do not provide continuous data collection.